Social Media Plan

We just went through a social media workshop with the Valparaiso Chamber of Commerce. We discussed the basics and a deeper dive into what Facebook can do for your business. During this session there were many questions and we covered a lot of content in the six hours of the workshop. Below we are going to cover many of the items we talked about along with going a bit deeper in the overall process. Whether your site is already setup on Facebook or not this information will help you verify your settings or improve upon them.

Define your target audience

When you define your target audience you are defining who you want to share your message with. This will also help you define what success will be for your business when it comes to social media. Within social media success can be different for each business. One business may look at likes, comments, shares, or an increase in overall sales.

Demographics

When you are defining demographics it is not as simple as creating a business page. Of course, you can do that but the results you get will vary from great to not-so-great with the majority being the not-so-great. By choosing properly and defining your strategy you will be creating the foundation to build yourself up for success.

Target Age Range

Gender

Occupation

Income Level

Education Level

Industry

# of Employees

Type of Business

Revenue

Of course, when you are creating your page not all of the above will apply for your business page. If you are seeking consumers the number of employees, type of business and revenue do not apply to you.

Having a Plan

We hope you started your business with a plan for success and are not winging it on a daily basis. If you are that is another topic for discussion. When you build your Facebook page you also need a plan. You need to factor in and account for:

All departments should have a voice

Who will be in charge of everything?

Who else will be involved?

Everyone involved should have a voice

How many times you will be posting each week?

What is your budget (this is not just advertising budget)?

This is your employee costs for payroll as well as any hardware/software you need to provide for them to cover your overall plans.

This also includes any paid advertising you want to do.

Who will be responding to your fans?

How will you handle the hours when no one is working?

What hash tags will you be using?

Who will be in charge of the graphics?

How will you define success?

Consistent Voice

Having a standard in place so that everyone involved talks in a correct and professional manner for every single response. This includes any administrators outside of your company, like JM2 Webdesigners handling your social media account.

Interesting Content

As you get started on social media you are going up against millions of other businesses that are trying to achieve the same thing as you are. They want to talk to customers, build a following, and increase their sales.

Checking Your Settings

When you build your site there are only a few questions you have to answer to get up and running. This is both good and bad. It’s great to get up and running. It’s bad in that the defaults given may not be the most appropriate for your business.

Insights

Dig into your insights and learn who your customers are. Who is using your social media page, what times of the day they are coming, what are their demographics. Insights can show a great deal of information to make your experience a success.

Test

Throughout your social media experience you will need to spend time and energy in creating an experience your fans want. You need to constantly be agile to accept that change is coming and will come at times you may not expect. Go with these changes and use this change to increase your social interactions with your fan base.

Conclusion

There is a lot to social media for each social network. Each network also has a lot of different rules as the culture of each network is different. To do social media at a minimum scale expect to spend a few hours each week to make your experience as good as possible. You should have team meetings, gather feedback, and be constantly striving to improve your processes.

John Marx

John has been an entrepreneur and pusher of all things “normal”. He was brought up where a handshake is as good as any word and even more important than any legal speak. John believes in giving back and giving people more than they expect. This is the foundation and basis of JM2 Webdesigners & Marketing. The prices will shock you, the amount you get will shock you even more, and the skills his entire team brings will completely amaze. He has built a team of experts that are talented, young, and efficient. Each one has the characteristics of the company in wanting to see a small business grow and each one goes above, and beyond which makes John beyond proud of them.

So why is John considered the “Code Ninja”. It’s isn’t because people fear ninja’s (they should). They will fight until their last breath defending, achieving the mission, and helping (in this case small businesses). John believes in very surgical strikes to help a business grow using agile methods that change rapidly, in ways people don’t expect, and with a relentless passion to achieve greatness.

Valparaiso Web Design Mission Statement

JM2 Webdesigners & Marketing provides each client a custom developed solution to meet their business needs. Dynamic and creative solutions for marketing, web design, software development, social media, photography, video, and visual branding. Achieving excellence in an honest and ethical manner.